When you have achieved a level of celebrity bordering on Madonna-like; when you appear each week in a prestigious business publication that sits right there in all the grocery stores, right next to the other supermarket tabloids; you are often asked to speak to school kids about your career.

The first question invariably involves compensation – how much do I make? When I tell them, they gasp (even the third graders). They assume that the minimum wage laws apply to columnists, just like everyone else.

The most compelling inquiry from the kids focuses on my success. To what do I attribute my success? Of course, I refuse to tell them.

I’m not interested in spawning a new generation of competitors. I don’t even tell the other writers at Banker & Tradesman how I do it. The magic is mine – and that’s how I like it.

Many, many years ago, there was a conservative Christian writer at The New York Times who helped organize a somewhat controversial Christian cult. Some of the other writers were uncomfortable with the cultist keeping a Bible on his desk. The editor’s reaction: If he thought the Bible was what made the reporter such a good writer, he’d put a Bible on everyone’s desk. See the problem? The Christian gentleman would have lost his edge.

Of course, in this age of the nanny-state, Cohen the Columnist, in the name of community-building and shared sacrifice, could be ordered by a shadowy regulatory agency to share his secrets. Especially in Massachusetts.

Spill It…

Even as we speak, the Right to Repair Act is driving around the Legislature, seeking support for the notion that auto manufacturers must share their deepest secrets with independent car mechanics. These smaller shops may be at a competitive disadvantage to franchise dealers, who know the secret chants and computer codes necessary to spiff up the newer generation of cars.

This local tug-of-war mirrors what is going on nationwide. As we pause from our quest to find the perfect deficit-reduction formula and other such trivia, we focus at the state and federal level on how and what and how much the independent auto mechanics should know – and who should have to tell them about it.

At the philosophical level, Cohen and Toyota and Ford should be able to keep their secrets, or share them with close friends, as they see fit. At the practical level, the auto repair business is a messy, mysterious market, with the manufacturers sharing some data with some independents, not sharing some data with other independents, keeping some secrets within the franchise family – or selling the magic to independent mechanics whose checks don’t bounce.

In other words, there isn’t much of a coherent role for government to play in this particular mystery of life.

A similar battle has been going on for years between independent auto body shops and auto insurers that offer policy holders “preferred” repair facilities at fixed rates – managed care for sick cars. Again, the independent auto body folks unleash lobbyists to level the playing field and prevent the insurers from offering up a convenience, or a bargain, or a dastardly conspiracy, depending on your perspective. Again, is government an appropriate referee for such stuff?

It’s not as if government is an unwilling participant in this kind of murky business. Politicians enjoy torturing competing lobbyists, on matters profound and petty. And some on the regulatory side prefer it as a hobby to stamp collecting or orchid growing.

In the mid-1990s, a bored Connecticut attorney general beat up on GEICO for a “deceptive” television ad that suggested when a lucky GEICO policy holder damaged his car, “GEICO repaired it within a few days, like new.” To the surprise of no one, except, perhaps, an attorney general, GEICO executives didn’t actually yank off their ties, pull out new sheet metal from a desk drawer, and repair the car. GEICO apologized, promising never again to masquerade as an auto body shop. The shame. The shame.

Cohen the Columnist is stopping now, to reread this piece and work his editing magic. It’s all part of the secret…the only part you’re ever going to know.